all things Considered
by Dramaphile
Summary: what happened in those missing scenes from "all things" that CC and Gill wouldn't let us see?


all things Considered  
  
By Drama  
  
Rating: PG for some kissing and implied sexual situations  
  
Category: missing scene from all things, MSR, angst  
  
Spoilers: small spoiler for Christmas Carol, a few others that you wouldn't really notice unless you've never watched x files before... anything up until all things is game, and of course, being a missing ep scene: a biggie for all things. If you haven't seen it, you probably wouldn't even get most of this, or you'd be relatively confused. Watch it first, or read the script, otherwise, you won't comprehend.  
  
Disclaimer: Chris Carter says I can't have them, but he's okay with me borrowing them as long as I don't make any money off of them, so I'm using them for my own self fulfilling purposes because, well, I feel like it! Besides, what else is a girl to do while she wastes away her summer waiting for the season 8 premiere!!  
  
Author's notes: out of all my unfinished stories in my countless wirebound notebooks, I chose this one to finish. Go figure.... Niki, you should be happy this one's shippy, even though you got mad when you read the unfinished version... I need a real hobby... Oh, I'd like to thank my bestest friend for nagging me about all my unfinished stories that will probably never get finished within a reasonable frame of time, and the evil elf who lives inside my head who makes me stay up nights with my notebook and pen, writing pointless fic, until I actually finish one like this, and Pen tab, the makers of the amazing wire bound notebooks that litter my room full of pointless fic like this, and papermate for making those nifty black stick pens I keep losing, oh, and my computer, for working and letting me go online every day to feed the madness... okey I think I'm done, on with the fic! Oh, one more thing, noromos steer clear, the shipper warning is now in effect. Full speed ahead!  
  
all things Considered  
  
By Drama  
  
Mulder couldn't sleep. It was mostly the jetlag, but there was something else too. It hung in the air around him as he stared into the blackness of his bedroom. Everything Scully said had made perfect sense and that was what worried him. What if... What if... all the impossible what ifs suddenly flooded into his mind. What if we had never met? What if she had never been abducted? What if that bee hadn't stung her? What if she hadn't fallen asleep? The last one pounded in his mind especially hard.  
  
His mouth was dry, and he got out of bed and padded to the kitchen quietly. He looked down a Scully, sleeping peacefully on his couch. Her face was so calm and peaceful, something he rarely saw during the stresses of FBI work.   
  
He filled a glass with water, careful not to make a sound, and made his way back to his bed. But you see, the problem with navigating in the dark is that you tend to misjudge the distance to something you can't see, and Mulder did just that to the coffee table and smacked him shin on it and proceeded to hop about uttering a stream of whispered expletives.  
  
Scully shifted on the couch and rubbed her eyes.  
  
"Mulder?" She yawned.  
  
Mulder stopped his hopping and expletive whispering for the moment and turned towards her.  
  
"Sorry." He whispered, "I just hit my shin. I'm okay."  
  
Scully squinted to see in the darkness.  
  
"What are you doing up?"  
  
"Getting some water. I can't sleep."  
  
"C'mere." Said Scully was she sat up. "But watch the coffee table."  
She reached over and turned on a lamp, bathing the room in a dim light that bounced shadows off of everything.   
  
She blinked a few times to adjust to the light and then looked at Mulder. He was only wearing his grey T-shirt and navy blue silk boxers. She leaned herself into a corner of the leather couch and brought her knees up to her chest.  
  
"I've been thinking"  
  
"About what?"  
  
"Everything. About Daniel and the choices I've made. You know, I didn't know he was married. Not at first. I always used to despise girls who dated married men until I was the other woman. I remember when I found out. I spent a good 45 minutes screaming at Daniel for lying to me, and then I left him. I lasted three weeks. I missed it. I missed the affection mostly. I needed someone to cuddle with, to ask me about my day. He loved me and for the first time in my life I was the one being loved, not the other way around. All the other men I'd been with, I went after, I fawned over them, I fell in love and I had my heart broken, they never really loved me. Now how I thought love should be.  
  
"It wasn't just the physicalness with Daniel. It never was. So much of it was intellectual. I fell in love with his mind, this exquisite mind that held so much more then I would ever know about medicine and taught me everything I did know. I fell in love with the ideal of Dr. Daniel. I guess I forgot to fall in love with the emotions and the flaws along with his mind. I knew he loved me, and that was part of the allure too. I craved the attention from him. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'd fallen in love with an ideal. In a way, Daniel taught me what love is, or rather what it isn't. It's not kisses and ideals and calling each other sweetie and making love, well it is, but not fully. Love is trust. Love is knowing that you could tell them anything and nothing would change for the worse. Love is trusting yourself with someone so completely that there's no room for uncertainty. Love is..."  
  
She tried to figure out how to word it just right. She took Mulder's hand between hers and studied it for a moment, the contrast between her alabaster skin and the way his skin shone coppery in the dim lamplight. She watched how the light danced off their hands, and then she looked up.  
  
"Love is me and you. I guess that's the only way I can explain it. Love is me and you."  
  
She squeezed his hands and brought them to her lips, kissing his knuckles. Her words hung between them for a moment, neither speaking, neither moving until at least, Mulder spoke.  
  
"If you could go back and change a decision you've made, knowing where you are now. Would you change anything? Going to medical school, being with Daniel, Staying with the X Files, any of it, would you do it? What would you change?"  
  
Scully closed her eyes.  
  
"I would... I would change..." She paused for a moment, thinking, then opened her eyes.  
  
"I would have done this sooner" She leaned over, closing the gap between their faces, pressing her mouth against those lips she'd been longing to taste again ever since New year's when she'd gotten a taste of them in a tentative kiss. It was as sweet as she remembered. She pulled back, hoping she hadn't done the wrong thing.   
  
For once, she couldn't read Mulder. In the past years, Scully had prided herself in being able to read her partner like an open book, knowing his thoughts and emotions by just looking into his eyes and interpreting his body language. But now she saw something she'd never really seen before. His hazel eyes that changed like a mood ring were now a warm green-gold and his body language was new, different somehow, but it felt so natural. He untangled one of his hands from her grasp and slowly traced her jaw line with his fingertips until they rested on her lips, and leaned forward.  
  
"I agree." He said softly and replaced his fingers with his won lips, capturing her mouth in a kiss, deeper and more heated than before. She could feel herself melt into him as the euphoria sent her spinning into a blur.  
  
~ censored for young audiences, namely, the author ~  
  
Hours later, she lay in his bed, her body partly resting on his sleeping form, tangled in the sheets. This time, it was she who couldn't sleep.   
  
Looks like we've finally found a cure for your insomnia she thought with a small smile as she watched her partner, in the FBI and in love, dream peacefully.   
  
But there was much more weighing on her mind. She couldn't help thinking she'd made the wrong decision somehow. Something just didn't feel right. She needed to get away and think about everything.  
  
She slipped out of bed, careful not to awaken Mulder and put her clothes back on. Every choice you make has a consequence she thought as she straightened her clothes and slipped out the bathroom. Scully took one last look at Mulder, one long lean leg straying out of the sheets tangled around his naked body.  
  
She scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper "I needed to think. I'll be back" and left it by Mulder's bedside, hoping he'd understand and left apartment number forty two.  
  
~ X ~  
  
She stared out over the reflecting pool in the early morning light and tried to grasp how much her life was changing. The decision she made only a few hours ago would determine the path of the rest of her life, good or bad. It was a choice, like every other choice in she made in life: paper or plastic?, left or right?, sleep with your partner or stay platonic? Only this decision affected everything that was important to her: love, family (heaven knows her family was divide don the subject of Mulder) and work especially. And it wasn't something she could ever really just take back. The words were said, the deeds were done the past is no longer present, no matter how near past it was. All this thinking and grasping and reflecting was giving her a headache to boot. She closed her eyes and massaged her temples gently.  
  
Someone sat down next to her. She didn't bother opening her eyes, she already knew exactly who it was. Every little thing about him, the scent of his after shave, the noise his shoes make when he walks, the rhythm of his breathing, was already catalogued in the back of Scully's mind under "Mulder".  
  
"How did you know I was here?"  
  
"This is where I come to think." His voice was still not quite warmed up, like honey over gravel, soft warm breath in her ear.  
  
"You don't want me." She said as she turned towards him.  
  
"Why wouldn't I want you, Scully?"  
  
Well, for one thing, I'm short."  
  
A chuckle nearly escaped Mulder's lips.   
  
"You're tall enough that you feet reach the ground."  
  
Scully smiled slightly. "My mom used to tell me that."  
  
"There is absolutely no reason why I would stop wanting you."  
  
"Oh yeah? I'm neurotically tidy. When I get stressed, I clean."  
  
"You can clean my apartment if you run out of dirty rooms."  
  
"I'm a hopeless skeptic, I shoot down every theory that doesn't conform to science."  
  
"Your science makes me prove my beliefs, I need that."  
  
"My breasts are kind of small."  
  
"They were fine last night." Mulder smirked, but became serious again when he saw she wasn't amused. "Scully, you're beautiful."  
  
She was tempted to roll her eyes at him, but this time he sounded sincere.  
  
"I question everything."  
  
"Go ahead, as long as you come up with the right conclusion, go for it."  
  
"I'm stubborn."  
  
"I am too. Don't you think that if we were going to kill each other we would have done it years ago? Just the fact we're still together as partners proves our compatibility."  
  
"I have this tendency to get captured by mad scientists and cannibals and serial killers."  
  
"And I should have a frequent patient's card at the ER, or maybe my own reserved bed, I'm there so much. This is nothing new, Scully. You're not going to change my mind."  
  
He smoothed an unruly auburn strand of hair out of her face and she leaned into his hand.  
  
  
"I can never have your baby. We can never have a child together. Not ever."  
  
Tears stung her eyes and Mulder enveloped her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head.  
  
"Then we'll adopt, or not have kids at all. I don't care as long as you're happy. I just want you to be happy."  
  
"I am." She said into his shirt, then lifted her head. "And that's what scares me. I don't know what to do with myself now. I'm so used to wallowing in my self pity and being alone that I keep looking for the catch, the loophole in all of this. I hardly know what I should be doing now."  
  
"Well, for starters, smile." Scully smiled willingly. Mulder wiped the tears from her face.  
  
"We can take this slow if you want."  
  
It's a little late for that. Besides, we've been taking it slow for 7 years, and I can tell you, slow is so overrated." She kissed him, enjoying the feel of his lips.  
  
"Hey Scully, what'dya say we go get some breakfast? How's Denny's sound to you?"  
  
She grimaced. "Greasy."   
  
"Well, I've got Froot Loops at my place."  
  
She smiled and kissed him again.  
  
"Sounds perfect."  
  
  
~ fin ~  
  
10:41 p.m. July 28, 2000   



End file.
